Necromancing
by expletive deleted
Summary: While recovering from the events of Duellist Kingdom, it's not Pegasus's conscience that bothers him.


**Disclaimer:** I disclaim. _Yu-Gi-Oh!_ is all Kazuki Takahashi's fault; love him for it.

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**Necromancing**

However hard he tried, all Pegasus could call to mind was the sound of varying screams - shrill, panicked, long, hoarse, choked. He frowned where he lay, trying to make mental sketches of the duellists whose souls he'd captured against the white ceiling, but could recall little.

It was understandable, of course. During the dark games it had been necessary to focus on maintaining his stamina, and he'd tended to regard opponents only as stepping stones _en route_ to his goal. The lacklustre memories only seemed odd because he remembered old man Motou and the Kaiba brothers as clearly as if he had inked their faces onto those cards by hand.

He couldn't stop remembering them. Details lingered wilfully in his mind, from the twists of their mouths to the shading caused by the texture of their clothes. His three most important victims were unlike the others in that they hadn't been cast into a distant realm, which had caused him to see all their panic and pain as he won their souls. More than that, he had watched them before he approached them openly, so that he could find times to best execute his plans; and so he had borne witness to Mokuba and Seto fighting for each other's sake, and Yugi doing the same for his grandfather's.

Yugi and the Kaiba brothers had been bereaved of their loved ones just as he was, and had fought just as he fought. The battles had been a physical portrayal of something Pegasus had known at the back of his mind - that it was unfairness upon unfairness for many souls to be demanded in return for one. Cecelia should not have died, and it should not have to be necessary to bring her back at the cost of so many others.

And unfairness the third: The Kaibas and Yugi had managed to put their losses back to rights, while he had been rendered as helpless before life's outrages as any other mortal. Moreso, considering that he lay on a hospital bed after a months-long coma.

The patch covering his left eye scratched his cheek as his face tightened with disgust. Weak as he now was, he could not even find the truth in the doctors' minds about what they thought of his coma, or glean details about Industrial Illusions affairs from his staff. Pegasus touched the scratch on his cheek and remembered how once, he'd found ghosts; he'd found a way for souls to leave the body without causing death; he'd found immense power--

Then he laid his hand by his side, because though he had found many things, he had rarely kept. He seemed unable to keep anything that mattered.

He shook his head, berating himself. _No, no!_ he told himself firmly. It was foolish to become dispirited. It undermined the process of healing. He would rest, and awake a little stronger and a little less taxed by the white silence of the hospital wing of his castle.

Pegasus shifted his atrophied limbs heavily - he hoped the doctors would soon see fit that physical therapy should start; the effects of his prolonged inactivity were certainly not helping his resolve to remain positive - until he was upright enough to lean over and reach the window. The view through it was of cliffs, some distance away, and beyond them the sunlit sea. It all seemed to be coloured in greyscale, but everything looked that way these days. Pegasus yanked the curtains shut. The dusk this created in the room was oddly satisfying; it made the vagueness of his vision seem more natural.

With that small freedom from his weakness gained, Pegasus relaxed. He was minutely annoyed to be tired so early in the afternoon, but let himself creep closer to sleep. One blessing of his present situation was that he had only his own dreams now. The Millennium Eye had constantly stolen them from others - taunting dreams that had been more vibrant than much of his life after Cecelia's death.

Except when he dreamt of Egypt. That had burnt out others' dreams in a haze of white and yellow, a shapeless bludgeon of heat. There had been a hint of release, and the taste of it floated back to him as he slipped further into sleep. Once, the heat had abated, in that underground chamber: Coolness within fingers shaped as delicately as if they hadn't been in the ground for months. Alive and cool, cold, shimmer, gone. Not even slicing through him, leaving no ache that would distract from the other pain ... just enough to love and not enough to hold.

In his deeper dreams, his waking thoughts were echoed: _All those souls for hers; it is so much to sacrifice!_

The thought was almost unbearable. It meant there would always be many people who would fight him for their loved ones. And every time a soul was won away from him, Cecelia would be lost anew, and he would have to start again...

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_And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side  
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,  
In her sepulchre there by the sea--  
In her tomb by the sounding sea._

From "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe.


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